Students in schools where educators use the tenets of Critical Race Theory learn more about the systemic challenges they face. This helps them understand the root causes of inequity and become more compassionate toward people suffering from discriminatory systems. However, in recent months, CRT has been misconstrued by people who promote laws banning it from school campuses and state legislatures.
Definitions
The concept of critical race theory (CRT) has been thrown around in the media in recent weeks, thanks to the efforts of conservative lawmakers seeking to ban discussion of it in schools. However, what is critical race theory exactly? Moreover, what does it have to do with education? In truth, CRT is an academic framework for understanding how power and privilege shape society. As a political movement, the philosophy is based on a belief that the United States and other countries in the West have a history of slavery and discrimination against people of color.
It also holds that people of color are oppressed by a system that is fueled by privilege and power. People of color experience the societal effects of that discrimination through a lens of social constructs like gender, class and race, which are often invisible or unquestioned. In addition, the tenets of CRT include concepts like intersectionality and working identity. These ideas help explain why a single person may be subject to multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and homophobia.
For example, a Black woman who works harder than her white counterpart at a law firm because of the negative stereotypes that surround their identities might be subjected to both sexism and racism. CRT is also distinct from culturally relevant teaching, which became popular in the 1990s and seeks to affirm students’ ethnic and racial backgrounds and make them feel safe in school.
Theoretical Framework
Critical Race Theory is a theoretical framework that emerged in the late 1970s among scholars in critical legal studies. CRT recognizes that racism is not just a relic from the past; it is still very much embedded in our country’s systems and structures, including the legal system. It calls for a radical reordering of society and a reckoning with the designs that perpetuate racial inequality. In education, scholars using CRT have studied the ways laws and policies that reinforce racial inequalities continue to impact students of color.
For example, they have studied racial segregation in schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students and barriers to gifted and selective-admission programs.
However, since 2020, conservative activists have used the term to denounce anti-racist education efforts and push back against teacher training that incorporates CRT principles. As a result, educators across the country are facing fines, threats and bans on books mentioning concepts such as white privilege, unconscious bias and systemic racism.
Methods
Proponents of CRT seek to change the dominant discourse that frames inequality as a result of individual bigotry. Instead, they argue that race and racism are systems of power. To expose these dynamics, they use a combination of analytical approaches that integrate critical analysis of lived experiences with discipline-specific conventions. Typically, they situate themselves as outsiders within their disciplines to challenge the assumptions underlying academic research and find new ways to address old problems.
As such, the views of CRT scholars often differ from those of conservatives and people of faith. For example, Derrick Bell, one of the theory’s first and most influential proponents, questioned the motives behind the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools in 1954.
Bell argued that the ruling was possible only because the interests of White elites—saving face internationally and developing the South economically—converged with those of Blacks. His work implied that racial categories are human social inventions, not biologically based, and they change over time based on various factors.
To understand these phenomena, he developed the concept of intersectionality—the idea that a person’s multiple identities—like gender and race—influence their experience. Despite this, many conservatives have attacked the theory.
They have promoted a false narrative that teachers are using it to promote “divisive concepts” and “hurt feelings.” To support this narrative, they have pushed legislation in states across the country that ban discussions of the idea that the United States is inherently racist, as well as lessons on implicit or unconscious bias.
Applications
Many scholars have used critical race theory in a variety of fields. For example, it has helped explain why laws enacted to address racial inequality were either not implemented or rolled back by state legislatures. Other examples of CRT applications include the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, school board diversity training, and California’s ethnic studies model curriculum.
It has also been applied to analyze the free-speech debate on college campuses. One application of CRT is in the field of health sciences, where researchers have used it to highlight disparities between racial groups. The researchers employed a conceptual model that integrated the Andersen access to care model,29,30, widely used in clinical settings, with a socioecological framework and CRT concepts. Another CRT tenet is that people experience discrimination based on the combination of their oppressed and privileged identities.
For example, a woman of color who works hard to support her family will experience more bias than a white man in a similar situation. CRT has also been applied to higher education, where it has revealed how racism can manifest in unexpected spheres.
For instance, scholarship influenced by CRT has examined how a student-athlete mentoring program facilitated the development of Black student-athlete’s social capital and self-advocacy skills. In addition, it has been used in religious studies to examine how racism is tied to power structures within religions.